


The Happy Camper Job

by meils121, tryxchange



Category: Leverage
Genre: Capitalism, Gen, POV Alec Hardison, POV Eliot Spencer, POV Parker (Leverage), Summer Camp, Weather, canon-typical ridiculousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 09:14:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16344014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meils121/pseuds/meils121, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryxchange/pseuds/tryxchange
Summary: Stop a city slicker from transforming his 40-acre, woodsy, lake-side inheritance--next door to a nature camp--into a theme park? Sure. What could possibly go wrong?Parker, honey, can you swim?





	The Happy Camper Job

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first time I've ever written for a community event, and I'm so glad I did. It was a ton of fun! When I saw the stuff [meils121](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meils121/pseuds/meils121) put together for the story, I got so fluttery! The perfect, ridiculous babies. 
> 
> Huge thanks to beta [the_rogue_bitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rogue_bitch/pseuds/the_rogue_bitch). Remaining mistakes are all mine.

The job was in Nid de Moineau, Wisconsin.

("Aw hell no I ain't going to no—no Knee to My Nose backwoods middle of nowhere summer camp! They even know what an Internet _is_?")

None of them had ever heard of it.

(" _Nid de Moineau_ , Hardison, it's _French_ , it means nest of the sparrow.")

It was surrounded by nothing but trees. Getting there turned out to be a bitch.

("What's summer camp?"

"What's summer camp? Really Parker? It's an American tradition, where kids go to learn survival skills and responsibility—"

"Yeah, it's pretty much outdoor babysitting for two weeks. Nana sent me one time. I am so allergic to pine pollen you don't even _know_.")

The client, old Mae Winthrop, was too sick to go with them—too sick to do anything but rest in her hospital bed—so they went by themselves.

Parker tried on her counselor uniform while Eliot and Hardison tried to figure out where the hell they were. The map on Hardison's phone hadn't updated in ten miles. Hardison poked at the screen. 

Parker emerged from the back of the van with a bounce, jumping down onto the gravel on the side of the road. Dust puffed up from her white-sneakered feet. She yanked on Hardison's elbow to bring his phone down to her eye-level.

"Jesus God, woman, your pigtails could kill a man," Hardison yelped, nearly getting jabbed in the eye.

She backed off. She'd found a tie-dyed bandanna somewhere, and under it, her hair stuck straight out in pigtails. Eliot batted one irritably out of his face.

"It's like Wendy's meets Addams Family Values," he muttered. "What's up with your GPS, man?"

"I liked that movie," Parker said. "It was wholesome. Like Sophie's new business."

In spite of their target destination, Hardison was still inexplicably wearing skinny black jeans and a pre-worn-out Atari t-shirt. And a trendy orange scarf, Jesus. He looked out of place in the blazing July sun on the side of a county road somewhere in northern Wisconsin, waving a hand at a cloud of gnats swarming near his face. Eliot felt bad for him, he did, but for God's sake, Hardison, dress for the goddamn environment. 

"Look, what do you want from me? Give me a cell phone with a goddamn _signal_ and I will happily work miracles for you. What we got here? A whole lotta nothin'. You know how to bounce satellite off of bears? 'Cause then I got you. Otherwise we gotta put our trust in a for real paper map, because I cannot get shit out of a dead zone."

Eliot aimed for a growl, but it came out as less than threatening _hmph_. The outdoors mellowed him that way. "Then let's go get a map. I'll bet you five dollars there's a gas station coming up."

"There had better be, because Lucille is running low."

"Our next Lucille should be electric," Parker said. "Like Nate's car." She patted the side of the van and got back in.

"I can't even find a gas station, you want me to find somewhere with a charger?" Hardison climbed back in, too, still muttering.

Eliot took his time, breathing in the clean, sweet country air. Even the gnats made something in him relax. Other than Lucille, they'd passed maybe two other cars since getting off of the highway, and one of those had been rusting in a neglected field. Birdsong replaced the sounds of the city. He could hear the wind in the trees. The air smelled like dust and hot flowers, Eliot's plain white t-shirt stuck to him just a little bit with sweat, and he carefully waited until Parker and Hardison were in the van before smiling heavy-lidded at the way the leaf-shadow danced under the trees on the side of the road.

Then he got in the van, because it was hot outside and they needed to get to Camp Turtle Point before the end of the day.

***

Camp Turtle Point was no more than a handful of low buildings around a cedar barn, tucked into the side of a hill full of pines and maples overlooking a lake that was just big enough to escape being called a pond.

"Welcome to Nid de Moineau, and welcome to Turtle Point." Sharon, the head counselor giving the tour, looked like an otter. Parker wanted to pet her. She restrained herself, because she was trying to be better about people things, but it was an effort. 

They walked across the dry grass to a dark brown cabin with four wings arranged like a plus sign. The temperature change upon walking through the door was tangible. The inside was several degrees cooler. It was also very dim.

"Mikinaak Cabin will be the kids' cabin while they're here," said Sharon the otter woman. "4 wings, each with 20 beds. We're not going to fill it up this week, but the south and east rooms will be at capacity. Come on in, I'll show you the rooms."

Eliot and Hardison were back in the van, parked in Turtle Point's east lot. Hardison was having some difficulty getting the comms to work without cutting out. In Parker's ear, Eliot's voice sounded staticky and garbled. "How come the names are in Ojibwe?"

Sharon smiled when Parker repeated the question. "The camp's northern border is about thirty feet from the reservation. Half our staff is Ojibwe, including me. You know any Ojibwe, Alice?"

Parker shook her head and made what she thought of as the tiny sad face. People liked it. It made them like Alice.

"I do," Eliot crackled. Then Hardison must have done something, because the audio became very clear. "Enough to ask for her number anyway." 

Parker grimaced internally. "Sorry," she said, shrugging. "They only offered Spanish in school." 

"You could learn some while you're here, if you'd like," Sharon offered. "There's an overview class for the kids, but the instructor always welcomes any adults. It tends to have a calming effect on the children."

Hardison hissed in frustration. "Why's it so damn dark in there? Parker, you got your jacket over your cam?"

It _was_ dark. Each wing had a single tiny window that opened out onto the forest. The leaves were thick enough to block most of the light. The wooden walls were painted a sober brown. Parker couldn't tell if intent or age had stained the worn floors so dark. The air had a damp, musty smell.

"No electricity in the dorm cabins," Sharon explained unprompted. "We like to encourage as much time spent outside as possible. The cabins are just where the kids sleep."

"Yeah, this? This right here is why I cannot be at Camp FuzzyWuzzy," Hardison said. "Cams are gonna be pretty useless inside." 

"We don't need them inside," Eliot pointed out. "We just need to catch Cline when he drops off his kid."

The rest of the tour consisted of showing Parker the other cabin, Zhashagi; the dining hall inside the refurbished barn; and the craft shed. Then Sharon took Parker down to the lake. 

"I'll give it this," Hardison muttered over the coms, "it sure is pretty."

Trees loomed over the shore, shading the lake on all sides. Even with the sun high, it was cooler down here. Mosquitoes whined persistently in Parker's ears. A pale organic odor hung low around the docks. Dim green reflections towered out until they disintegrated in myriad sparkles around a wooden raft some sixty feet out.

Sharon pointed out the wall of life jackets in different sizes, then took her down to the edge of the water, where they took off their shoes and let the water lap their toes. "This is where we have swimming time. Every counselor takes a shift on lifeguard duty, and each one of us has one slot teaching kids who can't swim yet how to at least keep their heads above water. Kids who haven't passed the swimming test aren't allowed past the float line."

"What's the swim test?" Parker asked. The water looked colder than it felt on her feet. 

Sharon nodded at the raft. "Make it there and back without help."

Parker nodded, and swallowed.

Her comm crackled. "Hang on, baby, can you swim?"

***

Alec hated bugs. He _hated_ bugs. And there were about a billion of them out down by the lake after dark. They seemed to be ignoring Eliot entirely, which was just not fair. 

"You look away, man, don't you watch or nothing," he warned Eliot.

Eliot folded his arms and grumbled, but Alec could see that little suppressed smile on his face just before he turned his back. Man wasn't hiding nothing.

Alec stripped out of his shirt and pants as fast as he could. He stood shivering in just his boxers for a second, then lunged into the water.

The bottom was sandy, at least, and the water was warmer than the air. It actually felt kind of nice, soft on his skin. He moved out a little ways, then manfully reined in a shriek when something brushed his ankle. "Oh my holy hand grenade there is something _in the water_ ," he hissed. 

The dark lump of Eliot on the shore snorted. "Seaweed, man. Lake weed. Biggest fish you get in a lake like this are gonna be bluegill. _Maybe_ a few crappie, a perch or two."

Parker, waiting in the shallows, said, "Can we get this over with?"

Hardison winced. Sometimes his spats with Eliot made her laugh, but when she was nervous or uncomfortable, it was better to just power through. "Sure. First thing to know about swimming: it works better if you relax."

"But if I stop moving I'll sink, right?"

"Yeah, for sure, don't stop moving, not really. I mean, actually, let's do that first, yeah. We'll do floating. Maybe that will make it a little easier. Come on over here; I got you." He took her hand and guided her into floating on her back, one of his hands supporting her head. "You can open your eyes."

Parker did so. "Oh! There are so many stars!"

"You just watch the stars for a little while, I got you." It was kinda pleasant, in the water in the dark. "Get in here, Eliot. Get in here, man."

"I ain't gonna just—"

"Aw, come on, man, we've seen you half-naked smashing other guys in the face and that was a hell of a lot more disturbing than taking a dip on a dark night. The water's fine."

"Get in here, Eliot Spencer," Parker said dreamily, in what Alec privately thought of as her Alice in Wonderland voice. 

Alec carefully maneuvered them so that they had no view of the shore, and was rewarded a few seconds later by the faint splashing Eliot made wading into the lake. 

"It's nice, right?" Alec asked the lapping water. Parker smiled up at him.

"Yes, fine, it's nice," said Eliot, close behind him. "Shut up and teach."

Alec smirked, but only Parker saw, and she smirked right back. 

"All right, my Nana was pretty serious about getting us swimming lessons. The first thing is, you gotta spread yourself out. Don't be small. Take up space."

***

By the time Tortoise Pond opened up to the campers, Parker could make it to the raft and back no problem. She freckled something awful, but Hardison seemed to like it, so she didn't mind. 

On opening day she got parking duty. That meant she got the first sighting from the fork in the drive when the mark pulled up in his red Alfa Romeo. A fourteen-year-old kid slumped low in the passenger seat, embarrassed by everything that moved. The mark glared at Parker until she pointed him toward the lower lot, then spun his wheels in the dirt going by. She felt pretty good about the gravel dust all over his undercarriage. 

"He looks like a douchebag," Hardison muttered in the comms.

"As opposed to what, Hardison, all our other marks?" Eliot growled. He was at the tiny bar in what passed for "town", establishing his character. He didn't sound like he was having a good time.

"That is a fair point; you are not wrong. All right, so he's in. Let me know when he's out so I can meet him at his hotel, okay babe?"

"You got it. Left. Left! Other left! All these parents have really fancy cars. This isn't an expensive camp. What's the deal?"

"Mmm, not expensive, but it is old." Hardison slurped loudly at his drink. "Old equals Tradition, with a capitol T and that rhymes with C and that stands for Class. Bet you anything all these fancy cars belong to people whose grand-daddies went to the same camp."

"Not this one," Parker said, watching a rusty old pickup truck pull in. The woman in the front seat looked exhausted, and the kid next to her smiled at Parker.

"Lower lot?" the woman asked.

"Lower lot," Parker agreed.

"Thanks!" the kid said. She—or he, maybe? Hard to tell—had bright orange hair and a distinctly adolescent lanky frame. The mom gave a thumbs up as they rolled away.

***

Alec waited at the hotel the next town over. It was the closest hotel to the camp, and he'd secured a room two doors from the one registered to their mark. Alec sipped some water from a plastic cup in the lobby and ignored all the white people giving him sideways glances. Melanin was _thin_ on the ground around here. 

There. Coming in the lobby doors now. 

"Oh man, that is just wrong," Alec hissed. The mark was wearing the same worn Atari shirt Alec had been wearing when they drove in. "Mm-mm, I bet he got that at Hot Topic or some shit, that is _not_ legit, I've had mine for ages and I got it for seventy-five cents at a thrift store like God intended."

"Do you even hear yourself?" Eliot asked in his ear.

"Shut up, here he comes." Alec slipped on his rich asshole attitude. It could be fun for a little while, but after too long it was like wearing a shirt with the tags still in it. Itchy as hell and frankly just embarrassing. "Mark! Mark Cline? I'm Luke Kent, I emailed you about the land?"

Cline smiled tightly at him, shook his outstretched hand. "Matt."

"Sorry?"

"It's Matt Cline. Short for Matthew."

"Oh, of course, Matt, yes, sorry."

Matt Cline sighed. "Come on, let's see if we can find a decent bar in this godforsaken place."

They ended up at something that called itself a supper club. It had a maritime theme going on—ropes and buoys made up most of the decor. The napkins were folded into floppy little sailboats. Most of the other diners ordered off the senior menu. 

Alec thought wistfully of the brew pub and waited for Cline to order first. "Yeah, actually, me too, but poppy seed dressing on the side salad," he said to the waitress, who gave them both a professional smile as she whisked their orders back to the kitchen.

Eliot lost his shit over the comms. "Seriously man? Seafood? Where is the nearest coast? You don't order anything that swims if its home is more than a state away."

"It's a grifter thing Sophie taught us," Parker put in. "Be a reflection of the mark. Make them see themselves in you."

Alec waited until after they'd finished the rubbery and uninspiring shrimp before broaching the topic of the sale. "So you inherited this place from your parents?" Who had bought it from their client Mae Winthrop after renting it for years.

Cline nodded. "Grew up out here. Hated it." He shrugged. "Makes a nice asset now, though."

"Well, as I said in my email, I'm definitely interested. I'd like to see the place, of course."

"Yeah, sure. You're not the first, so one of the cabins is spoken for, but I can get you a look at the other three. One of them is on the lake, the other two are back in the woods and just have lake access."

"Whoa, wait, you misunderstand me, man. I'm not just interested in a single cabin. I'm interested in the whole plot. Looking for a place to build my summer home, you dig?" Alec kept his hands in front of his button cam while he did his little rich-person dance so the team could see it, just because he knew how much it drove them both crazy.

"This ain't the city, Hardison," Eliot growled. "That shit doesn't—you don't get to act all cute out here."

Parker sighed, breath blowing straight into her mic. "Matt Cline doesn't know that though. Look at him. He might have grown up here, but he live here. Not really. He's city."

Cline wiped his fingers on his cloth napkin, balled it up, and left it in the middle of his plate in a big puddle of dipping sauce.

"This guy is a monster," Parker breathed.

"I'm not interested in selling," Cline said. "Just renting it out in parcels. A lot more money in that, you know? I've got a pretty sweet setup for short-term renters. Everything delivered. You don't have to leave for anything. I've got food catered from this company in Chicago, actually, and someone comes and collects your laundry every day. It's like a hotel, but you get to have your own little house." He leaned back in his chair. "Got the idea from all those people online clamoring about the tiny house movements. Thought, now there's a way to make a solid buck, right?"

"There goes Plan A," Eliot muttered. "Told you, Parker. And worse, if he's getting everything delivered, there's no boost to the local economy. They get all the irritation of having big city money in town with none of the benefits."

"That's why there are other plans," Parker said.

"I like plan M," said Eliot.

"Mm-mm," said Parker. "There is no plan M. This is a 25-letter alphabet."

Alec hid a grin and went on trying to convince Cline to sell the whole property.

***

Around the campfire that night, Parker put plan B into motion.

"Counselor Sharon, tell them the story you told me when I got here."

Thirty teenagers sat with four counselors, orange light flickering on their faces. Cline's kid and the one with the orange hair were sitting next to each other. Parker was pretty sure they were holding hands. Aww, hormones were adorable.

Sharon opened her eyes wide for the drama of the thing. "Turtle Point Lake is deeper than it looks. The white folks who settled down here thought it looked more like a pond, so initially it was called Turtle Pond. Thing is, it's deep enough that there are all kinds of things down there in the water that you can't see from the surface. Some of them are fish, but some of them are the bones of people who thought they were safe and did some pretty stupid things and died."

They were teenagers. Someone was talking about death. They all leaned in to listen.

"I'll tell you about one of them. This was back in the 1800s, when this whole area was old growth forest. Loggers came in and cut down all the trees, and these days you can still see the scars their teams left on the forest.

"Anyway, back then, they were doing all the logging with teams of horses, and in the winter they used the lake as a quick way to get the logs down to the road at the other end. So one day in February, they took a couple of Clydesdales—any of you ever seen a Clydesdale horse? They are the horse's attempt at megafauna." 

"What's megafauna?" Cline's kid asked.

"Really big animals. Like mammoths. Clydesdales are huge. So these loggers took a couple of Clydesdales with a load of logs out across the lake. But the fish and the frogs and the otters and the beavers complained to the lake that all the logging was driving them out of their homes, and begged the lake to do something about it. That February, when a team of horses and their drivers set out across the ice, the lake let them get all the way out into the middle and then cracked with a sound like a cannon. The horses slid down into the icy water and dragged the teamsters down with them. They're still sitting at the bottom of the lake. Sometimes, whenever people get a little too disrespectful of the land, the team comes back up and rides the lake, warning of the fate that awaits those who bring destruction. You can see horses in the fog, and if you listen closely, you can hear the jingle of their tack and the inevitable clop-and-slide of their hooves on the ice."

Parker smiled and whispered to her own team. "Think you can make fog horses, Hardison?"

"Can I make fog horses. Can I make—These hands have made miraculous things, but girl, you are talking about some weather god shit."

"Perfect," said Parker, and tuned back in to the campfire conversation.

***

Eliot and Hardison picked up a few things at the hardware store in town, then went back down to the lake after everyone was asleep in their cabins. Parker stayed in her role as counselor and remained in bed.

Eliot breathed in the cool, damp air. Crickets buzzed in a high-pitched whine. The lake was still as glass. The sky was clear, but the moon wasn't up yet. Nothing but stars showed in the sky above them. 

Next to him, Hardison shivered and hauled on his atomizers. "Come on, man, give me a hand with this. I'm not out here for my health."

"Fresh air is good for you, Hardison." But Eliot picked up another one and brought it to the edge of the lake. "Where do you want it?"

"Leave it there for now; first we gotta set the underwater rafts up. See, if they're too far under the water, you won't be able to see the mist at all. But you don't want them sticking out too much, right? So we tie these milk jugs together, fill 'em half-full with water, weight them down with rocks if we need to, and then we put these babies on top of that. They're built for, like, distilled water, so they'll give us maybe…fifteen minutes of fog? Maybe more, but no guarantees they won't get gummed up."

"You want me to tell you you're smart? Fine, you're smart. Now can we get these in?"

Mercifully, Hardison shut up and worked, and they got all the rafts in place before the moon rose. Then there was the tricky business of balancing the atomizers on top of the tippy little rafts and stabilizing them with more rocks, until there was a group of tiny nubs sticking out of the water about ten feet from shore. 

"This isn't gonna mess with the lake, is it?" Eliot asked, flicking wet hair out of his face.

"What do you mean?"

"You got little machines in the water, Hardison, are you—" he waved his hand around "—polluting it or something? Are we leaving the lake the same?"

Hardison pulled his t-shirt back on. "Nah, it'll be fine. It's pulling the water in from the rest of the lake, and spitting the same water out as mist. The batteries are in a waterproof box inside. There isn't anything that's gonna leak out. It's not putting anything else in. Just humming a little underwater. Not much, though. Nothing anyone can hear up here."

"Sound pollution is pollution."

"It's fine, it's the tiniest of sounds. Tiny. Like Parker. Smaller than Parker. So small."

Eliot glared. "We take them out as soon as we're done."

Hardison held his hands up, long fingers spread placatingly. "Yeah, man, of course. Put your shirt on, you're offending me with all that skin. I'm offended right now. I am. Get dressed."

***

Eliot rented one of Cline's cabins. Spent a few days establishing himself as a vet with untreated PTSD ("It's a _harmful stereotype_ , Hardison, I'm not going to just be _crazy_.") and then settled his character in to being a hermit. 

Hardison and Parker set off the mist that night.

They did it at sunset. No clouds hung over the trees to make spectacular colors out of the dying light; there was only one long gradient of bruised orange dimming to cobalt blue flecked with emerging stars. The kids gathered next to the lake, restless with evening energy.

Hardison turned on the atomizers.

It took a little while for them to get up a good head of steam. Cline's kid was the first to notice the fingers of fog spreading slowly across the water towards them. Parker saw the start, the nervous jiggle, the decrease in personal space, the desire for human contact.

The friend with the orange hair saw it next. "Oh shit, look!"

"Language," Sharon said mildly. 

"Sorry Sharon. But look!" Now more hands pointed, and some of the campers edged back from the shore.

Parker smiled. 

Now the points of origin were covered by a white blanket, so the mist appeared to be producing itself from the surface of the lake. The reflected sunset vanished beneath the reaching tendrils.

"Now, Hardison," Parker murmured.

The mist crept closer. All the campers stood frozen.

"It's just a little fog," Sharon said. "That happens in the evening, sometimes, when the water and the air are different temperatures."

"But the story," said the kid with the orange hair.

"Hardison," Parker said.

"Give it a second, woman, it's got a lot of water to process!"

Sharon shook her head. "I haven't seen fog horses down here in years. It's just the lake letting off a little heat from the day." But her eyebrows held the tiniest crease between them.

Suddenly, the mist boiled, billowing up and out in rolls upon rolls of silent aggression. The shapes raced toward them, and even Parker, who knew better, could imagine long-dead horses galloping across the surface of the the water, heads tossing.

The children broke and scrambled shrieking for the path up to camp. Sharon grabbed Parker and the other two counselors. "Get them rounded up by the dining hall. S'mores, probably a sing-along."

Parker let the rest of them go first. She stood for a moment at the edge of the water watching the fog flex and shift. One of the shapes burst toward her.

"Bad horsey," she told it, and followed the campers up.

***

They followed up the horses with sounds in the woods and strange lights at night. Eliot traced out the lines between the cabins with honey at three in the morning so that they were covered with insects by the time Cline got there with Hardison the next day. Hardison made a convincing show of being horrified.

("Really? It's gotta be bugs? Those things were all—biblical plague and shit.")

At the camp, Sharon flinched every time a camper approached her with another question about the ghost horses, or the "lake spirits", or the way the land might respond to someone these days.

The kid with the orange hair treated it as an inevitability. "With the way humans are behaving, I'm not surprised the earth is fighting back. We basically deserve it."

Cline's kid spent a lot of time with pinched eyebrows and an unhappy cast to his mouth.

***

"Yeah, my son isn't happy with me right now," Cline told Alec while they walked out to the fourth cabin. It was set deep into a stand of young white pines, furthest from the camp and the lake. The mosquitoes were awful.

"Why's that?" Alec asked, and sneezed into his handkerchief. He was never leaving the apartment above the brew pub again after this job. Parker and Eliot could handle everything by themselves. His delicate skin couldn't take all this bug-love and pollen.

Cline chuckled, opening the door of the cabin and holding it for Alec to come through behind him. "He's convinced I've offended some 'great ghost' or something."

Parker huffed in the comm. "Spirit. Great spirit."

"He's got all these theories about the ants, and something about ponies in the lake, I don't know. Anyway, it gave me a great idea, and I thought you'd get a kick out of it. Come over here."

The inside of the cabin had actual wallpaper. With severely dated designs.

"Oh no," Eliot muttered in Alec's ear.

"Jeez, man, it looks like The Shining in here, your interior designer can not have been happy about this." Alec picked up a pale blue figurine of a shepherd girl. The base sported the Avon label. "Where did you get all this shit?"

"Oh, the second-hand stores around here are full of crap like that. Check this out." Cline peeled away a little bit of wallpaper to reveal a hidden speaker in the wall. 

"Music?" Alec said, hopefully.

Cline grinned. "Sure, if called for. But my son actually gave me the idea with all his talk about the place being haunted. I can charge a lot more to stay here if there's a theme. So," he waved at the wallpaper, the speakers, the ugly green carpeting. "Haunted cabins! You have no idea, people are going to eat this up."

"They will, too," said Eliot. "This is a problem."

"And look at this!" Cline led the way into the cabin's kitchen. "Like I said, I'm stocking with my own caterer's food, and I've got my own cleaning company taking care of the cleaning, so it's a full-service stay! No one has to leave the cabin! I'll rent them out for short leases, maybe 3 weeks, a month at the most, and then turn it over to another thrill-seeker. I am going to make some serious money on this, my friend."

"That's…amazing," Alec said. "Real innovative."

"I know! My kid is going to make a great business man someday."

***

"Well shit," Hardison said when they met up that night at Eliot's cabin. Cline hadn't gotten around to his redesign yet, so it still retained it's rustic interior. "That guy just tanked our haunted land plan, so I truly hope you got something else up your sleeve, Parker, I do. Because I cannot stand being a buffet for those damn bugs for much longer. Goddamn, I miss being in Lucille."

Parker patted him on the arm. "It's okay," she said. "He hasn't met Eliot yet. Eliot, you need to get him talking about what actually scares him, since this part backfired."

"He's not gonna talk to _me_ ," said Eliot. "I don't see why you've got me playing this role."

Parker smiled and shook her head, then frowned and nodded. "You will."

***

The next day, Cline went alone out to Eliot's cabin to drop the news that his lease was up. Eliot met him on the front porch, a beer in each hand.

"Want one?" he asked, nodding to the chair beside him and handing over a bottle.

Cline sat and _actually took off his ball cap_ , holding it over his chest. 

Sometimes Parker was a weird little genius, Eliot would give her that.

"I wanna thank you for your service," Cline said formally, sticking out a hand to shake. "I think it's a damn shame the way they treat veterans when they get home, and I want you to know that you are appreciated by the people whose freedom you fought to protect."

"Whaaaaat?" Hardison's voice got high and tinny at the end, like he was being poked in the side by a skinny, sharp finger. Eliot knew that sound.

"You gave me his records," Parker explained, "so I looked a little more. He tried to get into the Navy when he was seventeen, but he has anemia that he couldn't fix, so they wouldn't let him in. His dad was in the Navy, though, and his mom's dad was in the air force."

"Wouldn't that mean he'd hate a real vet?"

"Mm-mm," said Parker. "He's been raised with an appreciation for the military. Eliot's who he thinks he could have been."

Eliot shook the man's hand. "Thank you, Mister Cline, I appreciate that."

"Now, I just wanted to come out here and let you know that I'm going to be doing some work on the other cabins along the lake. Give you a heads-up that there might be some loud noises, construction, new people moving around, that kind of thing." Cline raised his hands. "Don't worry, your lease is fine, you can stay as long as you keep paying rent; I'm not raising your rent either. I'm just fixing up the other cabins so I can make a kind of themed getaway for other people."

In his ear, Eliot could hear the silence of the flabbergasted.

"That is mighty decent of you, Mister Cline. Not many civilians understand what it's like coming home. It's nice when you run into one that does."

"You did your best for our country, fighting for the American way," said Cline. "Least I can do in return is my best for you."

They sat together in silence for a while, staring out at the water lapping on the pebbled shore down below.

Eliot took a swig of his beer and broke the silence. "Man, I used to be afraid of the woods, you know?"

"No kidding?"

He nodded. "Yeah. City kid. Grew up with nothing but buildings. All those noises out there, I used to think everything that wasn't concrete was, I don't know, a bear or something. Gonna eat me up."

"How'd you end up out here, then?" Cline asked.

Eliot huffed a laugh. "After I got home, it was people who scared me most. People, and what they could do. What I might do to them. Out here, I figure, no bear's gonna be half as scary as some of the things I've—" he put in a pause, like Parker had coached him "—seen."

Cline let the silence build for another moment. "I get that," he said finally. "I still live in the city. It drives me nuts being out here, knowing something could happen and it's a thirty minute drive to the nearest hospital. We used to come out here when I was a kid. Scared the heck out of me. The lady who owned this place, old Mrs. Winthrop, I was sure she was a witch. Curses and everything. And this one fall, I remember her husband died while he was hunting. We all thought she did it. In retrospect, that was probably silly, but the feeling stays with you, you know?"

"Told you," said Parker. There was the distinct sound of a high five.

"Yeah?" said Eliot. 

Cline shook his head. "Anything could happen out here. At least it's the midwest. No earthquakes, no hurricanes. And it's summer, so no snowstorms."

"Hardison," said Parker, "we've got to steal a tornado."

***

"There's something wrong with you," said Eliot over the comms that night while Parker did cabin rounds to make sure no one snuck out of bed. "Steal a tornado?"

"She sounds like Nate, but cuter, doesn't she?" Hardison sounded simultaneously proud and frustrated. Parker smiled. That was the best look on him.

"Insane isn't cute, Hardison," Eliot grumbled. But Parker knew better. Insane was the cutest.

She turned into the Mikinaak dorm and froze. Counted. Double checked.

"Guys, we have a problem," she hissed. "Cline's kid is missing."

***

The kid with the orange hair was missing, too, which was a relief. It meant that they'd probably snuck off together rather than being eaten by wild porcupines, which was what Hardison suggested.

Eliot met her behind the cabins. "When did you last see them?"

"They were at the evening camp fire. The Cline kid was setting marshmallows on fire."

"They won't come to any harm out here at night, Parker. They're not going to get mugged by squirrels." Still, Eliot helped her plan out expanding concentric circles to find the missing teenagers.

"Oh, uh, huh," said Hardison in their ears when they were on their third circuit of the camp.

Eliot got the twitch in his hands that was only for Hardison. "What. Hardison, what." 

Parker smiled.

"I found your missing—Yeah, hi, um, what are you, no, if you could go ahead and just not touch anything that would be great. Who are you exactly?"

The next voice was fainter, but very clearly not Hardison's. "The question is, who are _you?_ "

Parker rolled her eyes and grabbed Eliot's sleeve. 

"What are you—let go, I'm coming. Let's go rescue your nerd."

"Our nerd," Parker corrected.

"Whatever," said Eliot. "He got himself caught by tweenie boppers, he's yours."

Over the coms, they heard Hardison trying to explain himself. "Me? Who am I? You're asking me that right now? You break into my van, and try to touch my things and you want to know who I am? I am your friendly neighborhood nunya, that's who I am."

"Nunya," another young voice said faintly.

"Nunya business," the first one sighed. "He thinks he's being funny."

"You break into my van and try to touch my things and insult me," said Hardison, and then Eliot and Parker arrived at the van, too.

"You wanna take this one," Eliot suggested. "They're your campers." He melted back into the woods.

Parker rolled her eyes again, but she hauled open the back of Lucille and confronted her missing charges.

They spun to look at her. Cline's kid immediately puffed up a little bit, while the one with the orange hair hunched over. Parker was not fooled in the least. Orange hair had been the instigator here.

"Yeah, I don't know what you think we're teaching you at this camp," she said, trying to channel Sharon, "but chatting with strange men in the parking lot after _curfew_ is not one of the lessons."

"But he—"

"Will be dealt with," said Parker. "And so will you. Come on, back to your beds. What were you doing out of them anyway?"

They were reluctant to tell her.

"Well? What's worth me calling your parents to have them pick you up in the middle of the week?"

Cline's kid broke first, unsurprisingly.

"We thought if we could prove to my dad that something weird was going on, he'd stop making the spirits angry."

Parker sighed. "So you snuck out of bed and crawled in the first weird-looking van you could find?"

They exchanged glances. "We thought it was one of Dad's. We wanted to see what he was up to. It seemed suspicious."

"Catch that, Hardison?" Eliot said.

"Good enough for me," said Hardison. "Man, they was trying to mess with my shortwave. No one messes with my shortwave."

"Settle down," said Parker, and if she directed that at more than the two silly children in front of her, well, they would never know.

Hardison did, though. "You telling me to settle down. I just got invaded by hobbit-sized girl scouts. There's no down to be settled. Settle down. You settle down. Calling Lucille 'weird-looking.'"

***

The call came in to Eliot's phone at a quarter past six the next evening.

"Stevie Winthrop?" The nurse on the other end sounded like she led a girl scout troop in her spare time, practical and sympathetic. "Your grandmother gave us your information as her next of kin. I'm so sorry."

Eliot hung up and called a meeting.

Parker and Hardison came to him, sitting around the flimsy card table like it was their bar back home. Parker brought pretzels. Eliot rolled his eyes, but he ate some anyway.

"What do we do now?" Hardison asked. He was all angles here, nothing but elbows and knees and pointy Adam's apple. 

It made Eliot angry. All those bits sticking out. "Do? What do we do? We have no more client, Hardison. What we do is go back home—"

"And let the bastard get away with it?" Hardison asked, outraged.

"Not our problem," Parker offered, but it was clear her heart wasn't in it.

"What are we supposed to do with the land if we can't give it back to Mae Winthrop?" Eliot asked. "What, huh, give it to the camp?"

Parker smiled at Hardison.

Hardison smiled at Parker.

Eliot snarled at them both.

"You have the best ideas, man," Hardison said, holding his hand out for their shake.

Eliot rolled his eyes.

But he shook anyway.

***

"All right, so we've got two days to the end of camp, and then Cline is taking off back to Chicago." Alec flipped the blueprints for the tower up onto Lucille's screens.

"So we need to convince him tonight," said Parker. "Hardison, have you got about fifty feet of pipe and a metal drill in here?"

Alec felt the swell of excitement and dread looming in his gut. "I do, you know I do, baby, I showed you when we did the—"

Parker was already nodding. "I need you to make a rain tower."

"Like for the movies?"

She nodded again. "Like for the movies."

***

Eliot burst into the mark's house soaking wet. "Mister Cline, we gotta get you out of here. There's a tornado coming."

"Aww, thanks, Uncle Henry," Hardison said in his ear. Outside, the rain tower spat more water.

"A tornado? It's just a little rain, right?" Cline got a little green around the gills. His eyes showed white around the iris, and his fingers clenched on the pen he held.

"Have you seen the weather? Here, I've got a crank radio." Eliot wound up the chunky yellow plastic radio from his backpack. Hardison's voice emerged with jagged edges and static.

"—not a test. A tornado watch has been issued for Cortois county. If you are within the affected area, please remain indoors and go to an area without any windows. If you are able to, go to the basement until the watch has been discontinued. If you are outside, move to a lower area. Do not travel, I repeat, do not travel. Again, this is not a test. A tornado watch—"

Eliot switched it off again.

The real Hardison giggled. "I did pretty good on that."

"This area got hit by a tornado last year," said Eliot. "I was hoping it wouldn't happen again this year."

"This happened here before?" Cline was sweating now, his voice strained.

"Come on, let's get you to the basement."

Eliot hustled him down the rickety old steps to the basement. There were tiny access windows around the tops of the walls, but the cold storage room in the middle had none. It smelled of dirt and age. Eliot dragged a chair inside for Cline, then set himself up standing next to the door.

Cline grabbed his arm with clammy hands. "Shit! Is my kid OK?" 

"Man, why this dude have to be so complicated?" Hardison griped.

"Your kid is fine," Eliot soothed. "The camp has a tornado shelter under the barn. Nothing's getting at them there." Parker had them all out of the way in the basement of the barn. Something about a puppet show. Something that would make so much noise that none of them could hear the sounds going on out at the old farmhouse. It sounded terrifying.

"All right, you ready for the storm? See, I got a bunch of sound effects together and I'm piping it into these directional speakers I set up in a ring around the house. They're all pointed down, so the sound shouldn't travel that far, but I cranked the volume and added some speakers inside the house, too, so you guys should—"

A roaring sound built under the lashing rain, like a train passing overhead without the rhythmic racket of the tracks racing underneath. Cline's whimper was almost lost under the building cacophony. Eliot lifted his chin a notch, satisfied. Those in-the-wall speakers were coming in handy.

The sound of the fake storm was so loud that they didn't hear the tree until it hit the house, and then they mostly felt it. 

"What was that?" Cline yelled to be heard.

"Stay here, we can go investigate when it's over."

But even Cline couldn't miss the way the air tasted different now that there was a breach in the walls upstairs.

Another few moments of overwhelming noise, and then it began fading away, leaving only the rain. After ten minutes, that stopped too.

Eliot helped Cline climb back up the stairs. They opened the door at the landing.

A tree lay in what had been the kitchen and dining room. Pieces of roof and plaster were scattered everywhere. A coffee mug sat untouched next to a large chunk of drywall with pink paint on it. 

Cline stared in dismay. 

Eliot clapped him on the shoulder. "You are lucky to be alive, Mister Cline. Coulda been a lot worse."

"I gotta call my kid," Cline said, and pulled out his cell phone.

"Hardison," Eliot muttered. "Make this good."

"Gotcha covered," Hardison said.

On the comms, they heard Parker pick up. "Oh, hello Mister Cline."

"Are you all OK there? Is my kid OK? Can I talk to my son?"

"We're fine, Mister Cline. They're just telling stories. Storm went right past us. I don't think the kids even noticed."

"Can I talk to him?"

"Sure," said Parker. "You're kind of breaking up, though. Hang on."

There was a pause, and then Eliot heard Parker say, "Cline Kid, it's your dad."

Cline looked at Eliot, looked at the tree and the debris in the house, and gaped like a fish for a moment. "Hey kiddo. Just checking in. You having fun? Yeah, it's a pretty area, isn't it. …Fine, fine. …Yep, still working on it. I had this great idea for a set of haunted cabins. Now I just have to get renters! I have one, and he's a gem, but I need another three. I'm thinking about setting up a ghost walk through the bog." 

Parker huffed. "You can't walk through the bog. There are _plants_ in there. _Endangered_ ones."

"Goddammit," Hardison said. "What do you want from me, man? I made a—a _tornado_. I made a _force of nature_. What's it going to take?"

Eliot bit his lip and sighed. He hoped Parker had another plan.

***

"For claims of this magnitude, Mr. Cline," Parker said into the phone, twirling her hair around one finger, "we have to send someone out to inspect the damages. All just a formality, you understand."

"Of course," said Cline.

***

The man's sober gray suit matched the sober gray car he climbed out of. His muted black shoes crunched on the gravel as he walked toward Cline and Eliot. He sniffed at the wild riot of green around the driveway, took in the half-destroyed house and the road stretching off toward the cabins.

"Nice place, Mr. Cline. Who's this you've got with you?"

Cline smiled thinly. His hand, when he clapped Eliot on the shoulder, was damp. "This is Steve, one of my tenants. He was with me when the storm hit."

The man stuck out a hand for Eliot to shake. Eliot nodded at him, and shook the hand.

Hardison's whistle cut through over the coms. "Nate, you are looking good. Married life agrees with you."

Nate allowed a faint smile to become passingly acquainted with his mouth. "Let's take a look at the damages, shall we?"

***

"Hmm, no, see, these pictures of you that you put up on Facebook, Mr. Cline? Did you know that every photo has a timestamp that can be traced? I'm afraid these fall into the same timeframe you claim the tornado occurred."

"What? No, I never took those!"

Alec lifted a bottle of orange soda to toast his computer screen. The image of Cline with a glass of wine in his hand, gazing out at a glorious sunset was captioned, "Good to be me." 

"Maybe I can't draw, but that is a goddamn work of art," Alec said to himself, and ate another gummy frog.

***

"I don't know, Steve," Cline said to Eliot while they sat at the tiny card table in Eliot's kitchen. 

Rain—real rain—trickled down the window over the sink, turning the view into a wet blur. A cheap fan the size of a grapefruit sat on the kitchen counter, occasionally stirring the warm, damp air. Every time Eliot reached for his cup of tea he had to peel his arm off of the thin plastic coating on the tabletop. "Dunno what, Mr. Cline?"

Cline rubbed his fingertips together. "I spent a lot of money putting those cabins together—getting all the electronics in place, the atmospheric touches. There's a collection of four dolls in one of them that cost fifty k in total. And the landscaping! It's hard to make something _look_ movie-magic spooky, you know?"

"Do I," Hardison grumbled over the coms. "You ever try making ghost ponies?"

Eliot tried not to twitch. The sticky heat made him irritable. "Know what I think, Mr. Cline? Seems like you're the one haunted. Not the land, not the houses. You. You said you hated growing up here, and now all you wanna do is show everyone else how it made you feel. Why? When you could be living it up in the city where you're comfortable? I'll tell you something, if there's a place you love, be in that place. Life's too short to spend in the past if you don't have to."

***

Parker, sitting in Lucille, chewed gum audibly into the receiver. "Mr. Cline, the tree that 'fell' on your cabin was found to be cut. Between that and your photos, I'm afraid we must deny your claim."

***

Parker stood at the camp entrance watching the parents reuniting with their children. It was hot again, which cut down on the bugs, but made it uncomfortable anywhere but the shade. "Weird," she said, peering at her arms.

"What?" Hardison asked.

"I'm pink." She poked her arm and watched the white mark flush rosy again immediately.

Hardison sighed. "Oh, I got a whole big vat of aloe vera in Lucille; my girl burns like Red Hots."

Cline came up the rise from the parking lot. He'd finally gotten rid of the suit jacket, but still wore a button-down collared shirt. The climb up the hill from the lot had put wet patches under his arms. Eliot was next to him. 

"What? Why didn't you say you were with him?" Parker hissed, hastily smiling at orange hair kid as they went by with their duffel.

Eliot gave her a look.

"Hey scout," Cline called, and his kid ran up to greet him, slowing a little at the sight of Eliot. Parker didn't blame the kid. Eliot was imposing. "Got someone I want you to meet."

The Cline kid underwent a transformation, standing straighter and smiling like a—like a—

"Like a _Sophie_ ," Parker muttered to herself. "If that kid isn't a grifter by eighteen, I'm coming back to teach them myself."

"No adopting the wildlife, baby," Hardison scolded.

"Nice to meet you, sir," the kid said.

Eliot rubbed the back of his neck.

"Dad, are you _still_ doing that whole haunted house thing?"

Cline looked around at the camp. Parker waved. Cline smiled tightly at her and turned back to his kid and Eliot. "No. That's part of why I wanted you to meet Steve. Steve, I've talked with you about some of the difficulties I've run into. I'd like to offer you the entire lot, market value."

"Holy hell-bent handbaskets," Hardison breathed in her ear.

A few lipsmacks came from Nate, listening in with Hardison to see the end of the con. "Well done, Parker."

"Well? What do you say, Steve?"

"Take it," Parker said.

"What?" Sharon asked, passing with the last of the campers' paperwork.

"What? Oh." Parker reached up and took off her bandana. "I want you to have this. Take it. To remind you. Of me. And our time here together. Because we're friends now." She smiled at Sharon, and she could feel that it was what Hardison called her crazy smile.

But Sharon smiled back. "It's been a pleasure to have you, Alice. You have a way with kids this age. We'd be delighted to have you come back again next year."

"Thank you," said Eliot, and Parker turned back to the conversation happening behind her. 

Eliot had his earnest face on, and it was his real one. Damn it. Parker was pretty good at accounting for the mark, but her own team could still surprise her. Take it, Eliot. Take the offer!

"It's real generous of you," said Eliot. "But I can't. I can't be tied down like that. But I'll tell you what I'd like. It'd be real nice if you made a retreat out of it, like you were gonna. But not for profit. Something for guys like me. Vets coming back scared and scarred."

Behind Eliot, Lucille pulled into a parking spot and Hardison got out. He was back in his real clothes, Star Wars shirt under a red scarf, skinny jeans brushing the tops of city loafers. Nate climbed out after him. Cline hadn't spotted them yet, but Parker could tell a moment when she saw it coming. She patted Sharon absently on the cheek and walked over to stand at Eliot's shoulder.

"I wish I could, Steve," Cline said. "But I used up all my capital on the haunted cabin scheme."

"Dad, are we poor now?" his kid asked, tone more interested than concerned.

Cline laughed and slung an arm around the kid's shoulders. "We're poorer than we were, scout. I made some bad decisions, and Steve here told me some hard truths."

"If you're looking for money for a charitable venture, Mr. Cline," said a cultured voice from the direction of Lucille, and Parker couldn't stop the grin spreading across her face, because Sophie had arrived. She stepped down on impossible heels. She wore an equally improbable hat. She flowed over the grass toward Cline like one of the mist horses. "I imagine I might be of some service."

Cline took a moment to drag his eyes away from Sophie's decolletage and finally—finally—spotted Nate and Hardison. "Wait, you, the insurance inspector—Kent—what's going on here?"

"My wife," said Nate, still intolerably smug about the word, "runs a small business helping new charities get started."

Sophie smiled her sophisticated smile. "You've caught my interest, Mr. Cline. It's not often I see a tale of riches to rags with such a philanthropic twist. I'd like to help you. Now, I can provide the funds for the renovation and restoration of the buildings and land, but the operation would be up to you."

"But the insurance—"

"Can be overlooked," Nate interrupted, "for the time being."

"However," said Sophie, "should it come to my attention that you are not operating your retreat in good faith, that you are turning a profit or cheating the local economy out of well-deserved business, well…"

"Who are you people?" Cline asked. His kid looked positively delighted, and threw several winks and a thumbs up at Parker, along with a tongue at Hardison.

"Friends of Mae Winthrop," said Hardison. He smiled, his eyes half-lidded. "And maybe you, too. Up to you, man."

For a breathless moment, Parker was sure it was going to fall apart. Cline was too angry at being played to take the offered hand.

Then his kid tugged on his hand. "This is so cool, Dad. Can I help? I want to plan, I don't know, like the music or something. Or maybe the food? Counselor Sharon was telling us about this kitchen over on the reservation that does, like, traditional ingredients, but modern food? Like deer meat burgers. We could ask them to cater, couldn't we?"

Cline laughed ruefully. "I guess you got me. God help us, we're in." There were handshakes all around.

Eliot clapped him on the back. "Thanks man. I owe you one."

Shaking his head, Cline took a deep breath. "How can you afford to do this, anyway?" he asked Sophie.

She smiled, and took Nate's arm. "We have an alternative revenue stream," she told Cline.

Parker grinned and grabbed her boys by the elbows. "Come on. Let's go home."


End file.
